Peter de Villiers

If you are the kind of reader who has his or her finger on the pulse of their generation, you may be aware that the latest rage about town is a book popularising BDSM and erotic fiction. I’m not referring to Fifty Shades of Grey by E L James of course, but to Peter de Villiers’ authorised biography: Politically Incorrect.

Is your wife suddenly more secretive about her library collection?

Dubbed “mommy porn” by knowledgeable websites this work is the talk of happening book clubs and hip married women across the country relieved that BDSM, bondage and other forms of erotica are finally mainstream and can be spoken about in public.

Full confession here, I’ve not actually read Peter de Villiers autobiography (the NG Kerk banned it in my town), but I am told by reliable sources that it contains the following saucy chapters:

The End of Innocence – on tour with Bakkies Botha

The love that dare not speak its name – on selecting Zane Kirchner for the British and Irish Lions tour

Four more years of cruelty – life under John “Colonel Gadaffi” Smit (NSFW)

For those seeking further clarity on whether or not Politically Incorrect is a good read, it received the following glowing endorsement from Oregan Hoskins, de Villiers’ boss at SARFU during his tenure as Bok coach:

“I can confirm that Peter de Villiers was employed by the South African Rugby Football Union during the periods 2008 to 2011. During that time he was in compliance with our absenteeism requirements and we can confirm that he was not found guilty of any category 3 offences by our Human Resources department.”

I’ll be the first to admit that Big Daddy Rugby is occasionally guilty of using a pinch of artistic licence to help spice-up the odd post or two. Why wouldn’t we…the rugby world needs a bit of help in loosening its jockstrap every so often.

There are exceptions of course! Anything involving Gavin Henson, Peter de Villiers and the entire England rugby squad for instance. When it comes to these particular cats, the sh*t just writes itself.

Take for example our friend and former Springbok coach Peter de Villiers. He’s obviously been smoking a bit more crack than usual, apparent by his recent comments to the press. With even less capacity to ‘forgive and forget’ than Tony Soprano, he’s still ranting on about Bryce Lawrence’s performance in the match that dare not speak its name.

The ex-Springbok coach 'hard at work' in better times.

He’s clearly been putting his time out-of-work to good use by crunching the figures in a special Excel spreadsheet, having recently claimed:

“Bryce Lawrence makes, on average, six mistakes a game, which is a good average for a referee. In that game he made 48 mistakes, six of which were match-costing.”

I’d just love to see a Gantt chart representation of that, wouldn’t you?! So there you have it ladies and gentlemen of the jury, as clear evidence of match-fixing as you would want. Don’t get me wrong here, I’m not trying to defend Lawrence! Oh no…that would be like trying to defend Hitler for espousing an over-enthusiastic birth control policy. But PdV trying to blame the Aussie ref for the demise of his subsequent coaching career and backing that up with a weird ‘Da Vinci code type theory’ is just plain foolish.

Soprano…I mean, de Villiers, went on to say:

“So, Bryce mumbled an apology to the world. This means nothing! Did he really apologise for exactly what he did? He needs to tell South Africa exactly what it is that he is apologising for. For match-fixing? For inefficiency? For what?? How am I supposed to forgive him if I don’t know exactly what for?”

Well said sir! If South Africa as a nation has learnt anything from the Truth & Reconciliation hearings, it was that you can’t forgive and ‘move on’ until you know what exactly it is you’re forgiving someone for. If I poked you in the eye for no apparent reason, you’re not going to be content with a ‘sorry mate’. Lawrence needs to be hauled in front of Archbishop Tutu so that he can confess his sins; so that Saffa rugby fans can forget the past; so that our buddy Peter can finally bury the hatchet. Deep in Bryce Lawrence’s back.

You gotta feel for PdV though. The poor guy’s obviously going through a bit of a low patch. I certainly struggled to keep a stiff upper lip when he opened-up all ‘Oprah-like’ by saying:

“I feel a bit useless at the moment. Sitting back home and nobody shows interest in trying to draw from experience that I do have.”

Bless his little rugby socks. To be honest though Pete (and we know he appreciates honesty), I wouldn’t hold my breath for the phone to ring off the hook with top-notch coaching offers. Having said that, I do hear they’re looking to hire a Chico the Clown mascot down at the local Spur steak ranch. So it’s not looking all bad!

If only he'd just read the coaching manual it could've all been so different.

For one thing, we’re a rugby blog that doesn’t have much to say about rugby – though does have an awful lot to say about facial hair and the various developmental stages of Gavin Henson’s spray tan.

But just every once in a while a stereotype sneaks up on you and slaps you on the ass like a Lycra-clad Gareth Thomas on poppers.

That’s why if you ever needed proof that white folk have no rhythm, just take a look at this Haka from way back in 1973.

It’s like a bunch of awkward fathers dancing to Status Quo at the local community centre disco while their kids try to bury their heads in the cement floor out of sheer embarrassment.

If Boks coach Peter (till the bitter end) de Villiers thinks the Haka has lost some of it’s potency then he obviously hasn’t seen this clip. Not too surprising when you consider tv was only introduced to South Africa in 1976 and that three years before that young Peter was hanging-out at the local shebeen getting pissed on homebrew.

It was inevitable. Peter de Villiers just couldn’t leave his Bok position with even a little scrap of dignity. After the Boks exited the World Cup at the quarter final stage, he realised that the right thing to do was to step down. A quarter final exit is unacceptable in any Bok era. But of course, a man known for acting like a clown throughout his reign as a coach couldn’t go on to leave with a bit of a class. He had to go and announce last week that he “has unfinished business” and will be re-applying for the Bok position.

Sure, he won twice in New Zealand, beat the British Lions and won a Tri-Nations title. All good things compared to Straeuli. But seriously… you are judged by your World Cup performance and by those standards his era was a failure. It is not as though he lost a World Cup final when his flyhalf sliced a drop goal in the dying seconds of a close fought final. This is the guy who was “90% sure the Boks would win the World Cup”.

Seriously… it is time to wonder off into the wilderness and make the occasional appearance at the pub where locals will by you a round when you remind them that you were coach when Ricky Januarie scored “that try” in New Zealand to win the game.

In related news, SA comedians, bloggers and satirists announced a joint statement that they are “out of Peter de Villiers” materials. There’s nothing more to said, according to Mark Lottering, Trevor Noah and five rugby bloggers who were polled after Peter de Villiers announced his comeback.

“We were already working on our Alistair Coetzee material… this just sends us back into the past”, Big Daddy Rugby has gone on record to say.

It's not all doom and gloom. You might be able to find a positive ray of sunshine somewhere on the horizon. Image via Wikipedia

The first version of this post was simply one word that began with an F and ended with a K. The second version of this post added the words Bryce Lawrence to it. But I decided that complaining excessively about the ref is not a good place to be. It’s the kind of thing that ends up in you wearing a tin foil hat and reading David Icke. Besides I’ve said everything I need to say about Bryce when became the first legally blind man to ref at a test match level. If you’re like me you need a better reason than that to drag yourself to work today. Especially if you were one of those wearing a Bok shirt on Friday talking up a good game.

So here are some positives you can take out of the fact that the Boks crashed out of the World Cup:

your suspicions about Peter de Villiers being a crap coach were proven right, the only statistic that matters is the scoreboard in the knockouts and by that measure, PdV ends up in with Straueli, minus the public shame of having dragged the Bok name to new lows (people forget that however embarrassing it may have been to have had PdV as coach – it was nothing compared to Straueli)

You won’t have to listen to the “expert insights” of your coworkers as they explain to you why they think Bismarck du Plessis is a better hooker than Smittie for the 10th time.

PdV did the honorable thing and resigned before he was pushed. He’s no Syrian/Libyan/Egyptian/ANCYL/Zimbabwean despot.

Heinrich Brussouw is one step closer to getting the Bok captaincy

The squad that is left behind has a lot of promise. Francois Steyn, Gio Aplon, Andries Bekker, Bismarck du Plessis, Frankie Hougaard, Schalk Burger and the Lambo all look they will flourish under the right coaching setup

Even the good doctor Jannie looked solid at tight-head

No more Darren Scott at Supersport

New coaches always clean house after a poor World Cup showing. Pierre Spies, Bryan Habana and Fourie du Preez can now be honestly compared to their rivals.

You won’t have to listen to Bobby Skinstad justifying Habana’s place in the team by saying “he’ll peak at the World Cup”

SA Rugby management tends to go in cycles when they respond to a failure. An inspiriational/visionary type coach like Carel du Plessis or Peter de Villiers is likely to be followed by a technical coach. Sure vision and passion and all of that fluffy stuff is important, but you also need to understand that if you kick the ball aimlessly upfield a good team will hurt you. SA rugby picked Mallet last time they were in this position. There are a lot of good coaches out there.

Well that’s about all I can muster. If that doesn’t quite get me back, I’ll be returning to position I found myself in for most of Sunday. In the fetal position, clutching a bottle of Johnnie Walker, crying incessantly, looking at old photos of my under 10 rugby team wondering where it all went wrong.

Peter de Villiers’ big gamble will be finally tested this weekend. Upon being selected as Bok coach four years ago, Peter adopted a pretty bold strategy. Go and find all the old timers who won the World Cup, convince them to play for you, and pretty much ride the coat tails of Jake White’s 2007 team for as long as humanly possible.

This is the Bok team PdV announced and you can see the marks of Jake White all over it.

This is exactly the team Jake White had going into the World Cup final in 2007 with only enforced changes for injuries and retirements. At 15 Percy Montgomery is now retired, enter Pat Lambie. At 12 Jean de Villiers was unavailable in the World Cup final due to injury, but was in fact Jake’s first choice centre at the start of the World Cup. At 8 Spies was in fact Jake’s first choice, but was also unavailable due to injury in the final. In fact, all of the other changes to the team that ran on in the final follow the same pattern, with one exception. PdV has switched Butch James for the kicking machine autobot 3000 nicknamed Morne Steyn.

That’s it.

Pretty genius. I could have come up with same strategy after 6 pints at Rafiki’s with Silas Voon. The only actual change is a conservative one – get the Braam Van Straaten of our day to bang over the kicks from anywhere inside our own half.

Well, PdV, your pub strategy comes to a head this weekend. If you lose to the Wallabies – the jig is up. You will go down in the annals of Bok coaching history with the palookas and clowns of the early 2000s. With the Harry Viljoens and Rudolf Straeuli’s. But if your strategy pays off… and this team squeaks into the semis, you’ll have qualified as a somewhat passable coach who earned themselves a Mallet-like decent return.

The Crazy Man has locked and secured his laptop and is ready for anything Quade Cooper can bring on Sunday.

For the Wallabies on the other side of the equation, Robbie Deans, a proven coach and a damn good one at that has had a an absolutely miserable time coaching the Wallabies and has one of the lowest win-ratios of a Wallaby coach in recent times. But something changed this year for Deans – namely young talent. Brand o’Connor, Will Genia and Digby Ioane have all shone as bright talents and even Pocock has emerged as a world-class scavenger. Dean has got a talented squad, but there are massive egos in that squad and they don’t look like the closest knit bunch. That’s tough for any coach to manage. They’ve got talent, but there is also that uncomfortable matter of someone not yet having the courage to tell Kurtley Beale to his face that his moustache is quite unseemly and that his ‘tache distracts from team morale as a whole.

Other than Heinrich Brussow’s heroic efforts and Jacque Fourie’s Houdini escape acts on Saturday, I thought the Boks as a whole were pretty disappointing. Sure – I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth and I’ll always be glad to take a Bok victory over the men in black. Even if it is just to see the look of disappointment on the Kiwi fans “who flew all the way from Auckland” in the words of Bob Skinstad. Hell… if I could overhear the conversations on the VW minibus drive back to suburbs of Port Elizabeth checking in at the airport and during the flight back to New Zealand… A win is a win and all that, but how come this Bok team never really goes for the kill when blood is in the water?

We had the All Blacks in trouble at 15-0 in the first half. With a three score lead and a dominant scrum we should have put our boots on the Kiwi’s throats and stomped down hard… not letting them come up for air. So what do we do? Other more reputable websites (you know who they are) described the Bok performance as clinical. If those professional journalists had put down their tik pipes for a few moments to watch the game, they have noticed that instead of being clinical, we were treated to the sight of Morne Steyn aimless kicks upfield that dares a dangerous Kiwi back three to run back at a Bok defence that is out of alignment. The Boks allowed them to make 23 line breaks (admittedly that stat comes from “Mr Personality” Graham Henry himself). The Boks allowed them back into the game with a try in the shadows of half time. In short the Boks let them make the score line respectable. A better Bok team would have strangled this poor Kiwi side into submission – then dragged them all over the field with rolling maul after rolling maul, followed by Bakkies rubbing mayonnaise and All Gold into the hair of the pretend flyhalf Colin Slade.

Our first game in the World Cup is against a Welsh team that is not only sporting new hairdos and rather sensual outfits, but also sporting renewed confidence after a win over England. I’ve not seen anything in this Tri-Nations that fills me with confidence about winning the World Cup. Let’s hope I’m wrong, but I’ve got a horrible feeling that in between Bok players kicking each other in the head accidentally, the bright spots in this World Cup are going to be few and far between. Has someone started the countdown clock on PdV’s tenure yet?

It was a long flight back to Auckland for these "loyal" All Black supporters. Somebody might need to call Child Protection Services to look after that youngster in the top right corner - picture from Pretoria News.

Yes! Big Daddy Rugby always enjoys it when Peter de Villiers gives an interview. These posts just write themselves. So big ol’ PdV went on record yesterday stating that he was “90% sure that the Boks will win the World Cup”. That’s comforting…

I guess we can just ignore the really bad 2010 season and the start to the 2011 campaign. We’ve got an assurance from the man himself. Just to make really, really sure that we can relax ahead of the big trip down under, I thought I’d do a little research (thank you Google search bar) on previous predictions Peter de Villiers has made to the media.

So according to my very reliable research Peter de Villiers has gone on record with some famous predictions before:

PdV was 90% sure that when George Lucas made Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace in 1999 that it was going to be “way better than the first Star Wars films”

Just when you think Peter de Villiers can’t possibly go any lower, say anything dumber, or do anything more disgraceful than losing to a cream puff Wallaby side, he goes and …. totally redeems himself!

After last week’s embarrassment, I was ready to hand my chips in and say no more to PdV. But then when he was confronted by journalists this week about why he hadn’t picked his best squad to tour, he managed to pull out this sparkling gem;

“What do you mean by best players? The guys here at the moment, they performed in South Africa, in Super 15. There’s a few guys who didn’t make it that were also the best in Super 15. So best is a relative thing. Experience, then I’ll play Naas Botha too because he’s helluva experienced. “

The Nasty Booter - he's "helluva experienced".

He’s back baby! That touch of comic genius, the timing, the turn of phrase. It’s what we’ve all been missing in our Bok coach all season. He was admittedly an underdog to coach the Boks when his name was first thrown in the hat to be a contender. But those who underrated him, clearly had never seen his now legendary Woodstock stand up comedy act. Peter de Villiers was well-known in those parts for his edgy material often combining material about the Arab-Israeli conflict with biting social commentary in a frequently incendiary comic performance. Those who were fortunate enough to see his early material from the Woodstock comedy clubs never question his ability to be Bok coach. They even go so far to say Richard Prior stole most of his act from Peter de Villiers.

Well as long as he can continue to produce the comedic gems – he’ll continue to command a following amongst parts of the nation’s fan base. After all – it sure doesn’t look like this team is being technically coached.

And for the movie fans out there – here’s a reenactment of PdV redeeming himself on the Bok tour to Australasia, courtesy of the Farrelly brothers: